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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27892093">Knight In Grey Armor</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot'>WhyWhyNot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans Series - Wildbow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Attempted Kidnapping, Coercion, Gen, Hero &amp; Villain Friendship, Kidnapping, Loss of Identity, Manipulation, Solitary Confinement, Unreliable Narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:34:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27892093</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Taylor Hebert, bird Tinker, decides to redeem a villain through the power of friendship.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver &amp; Colin Wallis | Armsmaster | Defiant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>278</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>139</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Slope 1.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/gifts">Gerbilfriend</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor should change into her night clothes, go to bed, and try to catch some sleep. It’s past three in the morning, and she has school tomorrow. She should at least take off her shoes.<br/>
<br/>
She can’t bring herself to move.<br/>
<br/>
She should turn off the lights before Dad notices. She’s not sure how she managed to sneak inside without waking him up. But if she does, she will have to stay in the dark, she won’t be able to see anyone coming.<br/>
<br/>
There was a man, a villain. He wanted her to come with him.<br/>
<br/>
Taylor didn’t. Taylor didn’t want to go with him. He didn’t take no for an answer.<br/>
<br/>
She looked him in the eyes, she thinks. Hard to tell, with his mask. She looked him in the eyes, and then she <em>couldn’t move</em>.<br/>
<br/>
He could have done anything, could have taken her anywhere, and she couldn’t have stopped him, because she <em>couldn’t move</em>.<br/>
<br/>
He wanted to use her for her power. He wanted her to work for him, to make things for him, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.<br/>
<br/>
He said she would do it, in the end. Work for him, do anything he asked.<br/>
<br/>
Taylor couldn’t move, couldn't run, and she knew if she stayed like that long enough, she would break and build anything he wanted for the privilege to <em>blink</em>.<br/>
<br/>
Someone saved her. It was hard to see what happened through her burning eyes, but it was a man, wearing power armor, she thinks.<br/>
<br/>
He saved her, and she ran all the way home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Slope 1.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor only wanted to catch a bird.</p><p>It wasn’t the first time she sneaked out at night to go to the Trainyard. Everything actually valuable has long been taken, but it doesn’t mean she can’t find useful things there. Scrap metal, parts from old engines, bits of wiring salvaged from long dead utilities. It’s not like she has the money to go to a hardware or electronic store.</p><p>She <em>needs</em> them. She has ideas dancing in her head, terrible ideas and terrible machines, and she <em>has</em> to make them. She has to. She could help people with them.</p><p>She had gotten inside an old passenger train, and was trying to pluck out the springs of one of the seats when through the broken window, she saw a bird swoop down to catch something in the grass growing between the rails.</p><p>A barn owl.</p><p>Taylor doesn’t know how she managed to whip out and aim the Birdcatcher in time, but she did, and the bird fell in the grass.</p><p>Taylor went outside to pick up the stunned bird, knelt on the ground and ran her hand through the soft tawnry Feathers, and then she put it in the side pocket of her backpack .</p><p>The Nest was almost done, but it wouldn’t work without a living bird. </p><p>“I was waiting for you,” said a man behind her, and she got up.</p><p>The man was wearing a fencing helmet painted to look like the head of an open-mouthed snake.</p><p>Basilisk.</p><p>A villain.</p><p>He said he wanted her to come with him, to work for him, and Taylor didn’t want to, and the Birdcatcher might not have been made with humans in mind, but it’s still a weapon and it’s better than nothing. </p><p>She looked him in the eyes, she thinks. Hard to tell, with his mask. She looked him in the eyes, and then she <em>couldn’t move</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Slope 1.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The PRT say Taylor should join the Wards.</p><p>The PRT has an official website, and a part of it is helpfully dedicated to giving advice to new capes. Since Taylor is underage, most of that advice is to join the Wards as soon as possible, with a list of advantages and a list of all the misfortune that could befall her without their protection.</p><p>Dying figures a lot. Permanent injury, too. Since she’s a Tinker, she gets a nice forced recruitment bonus.</p><p>Taylor thinks about Basilisk asking her to come with him, and not taking no for an answer. She thinks about being helpless, unable to move, and knowing she had lost before the fight could even begin.</p><p>Taylor thinks she should join the Wards. She would have funds. Materials. She would be <em>safe</em>.</p><p>She won’t.</p><p>She <em>can’t</em>.</p><p>A man saved her in the Trainyard. A hero, but not one from the Protectorate. He was wearing power armor, so he must be a Tinker.</p><p>Like her.</p><p>Maybe they could work together. Watch each other’s back.</p><p>He saved her, after all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Slope 1.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Try as she might, Taylor doesn’t find any reference to the man who saved her on PHO. It’s like there isn’t any adult Tinker hero operating in Brockton Bay.</p><p>Maybe he’s a new cape, too. Taylor didn’t see much of his fight with Basilisk, her vision blurry from keeping her eyes open for several minutes, but she started to be able to move again before the man who saved her left, and after a few blinks she managed to get a good look at his armor. It didn’t have any paint or decorations.</p><p>She wants to find him. He saved her. She wants to thank him.</p><p>She doesn’t even know his <em>name</em>.</p><p>Taylor can’t call him, or send him an email or use PHO to message him. She doesn’t have any of his contact informations. Just walking the streets in the hope of running into him is out as well, both inefficient and risky. </p><p>Basilisk showed she isn’t ready to go out solo yet.</p><p>It was harder without access to the Trainyard, but Taylor has managed to finish the Nest by sacrifying her night lamp.</p><p>It’s done.</p><p>She will put Athena in the Nest today.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Slope 1.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>The Nest</em> is a nice, innocuous name for a terrible thing.</p><p>Taylor could have called it something else, like <em>Cage</em>, or maybe <em>Torture Implement</em>, instead of hiding behind an euphemism. But <em>Nest</em> is less likely to scare people off or get her arrested.</p><p>She wishes she had the material they use for dissections at Winslow. The scalpels, the bone scissors, the groove directors. Instead, she has scissors and pins salvaged from an old sewing kit, a cutter, and a dinner knife stolen from the kitchen and sharpened as much as she could.</p><p>It will have to do.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Athena,” Taylor says, and she gets to work.</p><p>Remplacing one of Athena’s eye with a camera proves difficult, mostly because of her lack of experience and improvised tools, and the results are far from perfect. The neck of the birds will be stiffened, lacking its original ability to turn 270 degrees, and the inegal weight will impair their flight somewhat.</p><p>But it will record things, and bring the film back to her.</p><p>Taylor puts Athena in the Nest, and waits for more birds to come out of it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Slope 1.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She found him.</p><p>The man who saved her.</p><p>Taylor found him.</p><p>It took her several weeks. Several weeks, where Athena’s children swept over the streets of Brockton Bay before bringing footage back to her. Several weeks where she pored over said footage, pinning every appearance of the man on a map of the city.</p><p>Given where he got sighted the most, Taylor is fairly sure she knows where he lives, or at least operates from.</p><p>It’s a group of delerict buildings, where people were tortured and killed by the Slaughterhouse Nine when they came to Brockton Bay. No one wanted to buy them after that, and they were left to slowly rot.</p><p>A good choice. Taylor should have thought of something like that, although transportation would still have been a problem.</p><p>She found him. Just in time, since Athena looks about to die, but she found him.</p><p>She found him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Slope 1.7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor doesn’t have much of a costume.</p><p>She wishes she had an armor, or knew how to make one, but the closest she can get is an idea for what basically amount to covering herself in live birds.</p><p>It doesn’t seem like a very good idea.</p><p>Instead, she has a cheap owl mask from the dollar store, cargo pants and a safari jacket, the Birdcatcher, and the crude control bracelet for Athena’s children she made from a watch she found in the street.</p><p>Taylor is pretty sure she looks ridiculous, or at least pathetic, but she doesn’t have anything better. The man who saved her saw her facing Basilisk, anyway. She was even more pathetic then.</p><p>It will have to do.</p><p>Taylor puts on her mask, and goes to meet the man who saved her.</p><p>He appears to be angry about it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Slope 1.8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The man has a halberd, and its head is too close to Taylor’s throat for comfort.</p><p>He’s angry. Taylor didn’t expect him to be angry.</p><p>“<em>Who are you and what do you want?<em>” the man snarls.</em></em></p><p>
  <em>
    <em>Taylor tries not to freeze. Not like the last time she faced down a man in a mask. Hopes he doesn’t notice her hand slowly sliding toward the Birdcatcher.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>He saved her.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>He was the first person in over a year to care enough to <em>help</em>.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>She doesn’t want him to be an enemy.</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>“I’m the girl from the Trainyard. The one you saved from Basilisk.”</em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>The man relaxes a bit, raises his weapon away from her, but stays on guard. </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>“The Tinker girl,” he says, and then, “What do you want?” </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>Taylor feels stupid, suddenly. Stupid and pathetic. </em>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <em>“I wanted to thank you,” she says. “And I wanted to ask for… For advice.”</em>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Slope 1.9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The man appears vaguely disbelieving of the fact that Taylor is asking for advice, and Taylor is starting to get worried he will decide she’s deceiving him and fight her. She doesn’t want him to be an enemy.</p><p>She’s also pretty sure she would loose.</p><p>“This is a bad idea,” warns the man. “Go ask someone else.”</p><p>“I don’t have anyone else I can ask,” Taylor says. “Who am I supposed to go to? Basilisk? The gangs?”</p><p>She hopes he won’t bring up the Protectorate or Wards and ask her why she didn’t go to <em>them</em>.</p><p>He doesn’t.</p><p>“Why <em>me</em>?” he asks, and Taylor points out he’s the only cape she’s met who didn’t try to kidnap her.</p><p>The man stays silent and still for some time, and Taylor wishes he didn’t have a helmet. She can’t read his face with the visor covering it.</p><p>“<em>Fine</em>,” he finally grits out.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Slope 1.10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The man’s name is Defiant, and he doesn’t bother with pleasantries.</p><p>That’s fair enough. He obviously wants Taylor out of his hair as soon as possible.</p><p>It stings a bit, because Taylor, silly Taylor, thought they could, what? Be friends? Be teammates?</p><p>He saved her. He <em>helped</em> her, and she wanted it to mean something.</p><p>Defiant quickly explains about the unspoken rules of cape life : no murder, no unmasking, no going after civilian identities.</p><p>“It looks like a game,” he says, “and you might think it’s stupid, and ignore it. It’s not like anyone will stop you. There isn’t any enforcer for those rules save for natural consequences, and they’re more common sense than anything. Just remember that if you escalate, so will the people you’re fighting, and keep in mind that everyone will ignore the rules if they think they can get away with it.” </p><p>Defiant sounds like he’s speaking from long experience. Taylor was wrong. He’s not a new cape by any mean.</p><p>“It looks like a game,” Defiant says, “but it <em>isn’t one</em>. Remember Basilisk, Tinker girl. Remember the stakes.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Slope 1.11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Defiant shoos her away with the firm request that she doesn’t come back, Taylor goes home and sleeps.</p><p>In the morning, she looks up Defiant on PHO. It’s a lot more informative with his name.</p><p>For one, she was definitely wrong when she thought he was a new cape. He’s been active since 1997 at the latest, with some speculations that he was operating under a different name in 1996. That’s a ridiculously long time. He’s been a cape for almost as long as Taylor has been alive, if not as long. </p><p>That’s pretty impressive.</p><p>It also appears that Defiant is pretty nomadic, only saying in a city between three months and a year before leaving for the next one, which is probably why Taylor didn’t know who he was. She would have heard about him if he had been active in Brockton Bay for over a decade.</p><p>He seems to prefer places with high level of cape activities, which would explain his presence in Brockton Bay. </p><p>Finally, he has taken part in Endbringers fights a few times, when they happened to attack the city he was in, although it doesn’t look like he volunteers regularly.</p><p>Oh, and his weapon is a poleaxe, not a halberd. </p><p>However, the reason Taylor didn’t find him in her previous PHO searches isn’t that she was looking for someone new, or someone from Brockton Bay. It’s that she was looking for a hero.</p><p>He’s a villain. </p><p>Granted, he seems to very rarely interact with civilians directly, if at all. Most of the time, he faces other villains, with sporadic fights with the Protectorate or independent heroes.</p><p>But he’s a villain.</p><p>He <em>helped</em> her. She wanted him to be <em>good</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Interlude 1.x</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Defiant is under no illusion that he is a good man. </p><p>He’s made his choice, for better or worse, and he didn’t choose surrender, or redemption. He didn’t choose to be <em>good</em>. </p><p>He stopped being good in a small white room, Joshua’s hand on his shoulder. </p><p>Defiant knows he’s not a good man, and helping the Tinker girl doesn’t change that. It’s just… </p><p>She’s a Tinker. A new trigger.</p><p>She’s a Tinker, a new trigger, and someone wanted to use that. To use <em>her</em>.</p><p>He’s not sure why he thought he needed to stop it. He doesn’t know her. He didn’t have anything to gain by helping her. </p><p>He saved the girl from Basilisk. Made sure he wouldn’t go back for her. Gave her some advice to help her not get herself killed, or worse. It’s more than he got.</p><p>Maybe it wasn’t about the Tinker girl. Not really. Maybe it was about a boy alone in a small white room. </p><p>He doesn’t want to think about it. </p><p>Defiant is not a good man, and he doesn’t plan on being one.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Defiant 2.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Defiant is a villain.</p><p>It doesn’t make a lot of sense.</p><p>He helped Taylor. He <em>saved</em> her. He didn’t ask for anything, and seemed surprised when he saw her again.</p><p>He saw a teenage girl he didn’t know being threatened, and helped her without expecting in return.</p><p>That’s not… That’s not <em>villainous</em>. Objectively, it’s more… Heroic.</p><p>He even gave her the advice she asked him for.</p><p>
  <em>It doesn’t make any sense. </em>
</p><p>Defiant saved her. Defiant helped her. Defiant did more for her than anyone else in the last two years.</p><p>Defiant is a villain.</p><p>And Shadow Stalker is a hero.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Defiant 2.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There had been a meeting about the bullying.</p><p>It had been hard, talking to Dad. Telling him about what was happening at school. Telling him about the insults, the harassment, the guilt trips. Telling him about Sophia. Knowing he might tell Alan, or <em>Zoé</em>, or <em>Emma</em>. Begging him not to. </p><p>Taylor didn’t fully believe things would get better, but a small, stupid part of her hoped it would. Hoped that with an adult there, and the memory of what happened two days before, she could get…</p><p>Not for the bullies to stop. She didn’t think they would. Not for them to be punished, either, although she would have liked it if they had gotten in-school suspension.</p><p>She could get to leave. Go to Arcadia, turn a new leaf, start a new live where she would be left alone.</p><p>It hadn’t happened, of course.</p><p>They’d dismissed it. The emails, the list of incidents Taylor made, everything. Sophia and her friends had gotten away with barely a slap on the wrist.</p><p>The outcome had been decided before the meeting even started.</p><p>Taylor didn’t matter to them.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And then, Taylor found out Sophia was Shadow Stalker.</p><p>The Ward.</p><p>The <em>hero</em>.</p><p>And it made sense, didn’t it? No wonder they would protect her. What was ugly, awkward, worthless Taylor Hebert in the face of all the lives Sophia could save? Why risk compromise her success for one  lonely girl with a broken family?</p><p>It wasn’t apathy, or indifference, keeping the adults from helping Taylor.</p><p>She was being willfully sacrificed on the altar of the greater good.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Defiant 2.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Defiant is a villain.</p><p>Shadow Stalker is a hero.</p><p>Defiant, who is a villain, helped her, saved her, fought for her, answered her questions and gave her some of the tools she would need to survive. He wasn’t kind when he did it, but he was <em>good</em>.</p><p>Sophia, who is Shadow Stalker, who is a Ward, who is a Hero, wasn’t. She hurt Taylor, again and again, grind her into the dust, and laughed. And maybe it’s not much in the face of the good she does, of the people she saves, maybe one single teenage girl is an acceptable sacrifice for the common good, but Taylor won’t forget it, and she doesn’t feel ready to forgive.</p><p>Maybe there is less value in the “hero” and “villain” label than Taylor thought.</p><p>Maybe she ought to ignore them.</p><p>The heroes cast her aside in sacrifice. Why should she listen to their judgment?</p><p>Taylor needs to talk to Defiant.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Defiant 2.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor isn’t stupid. She’s not going to just show up unprepared on a villain’s doorstep.</p><p>She’s redesigned the Birdcatcher. It’s still not very powerful, since its primary purpose is to to catch living birds, but now she can overcharge it and get a more powerful shot. Of course, it will only work once before frying, and she will have to make another one from scratch, but she thinks it might be enough to go through Defiant’s visor if worse comes to worse.</p><p>It’s better than nothing.</p><p>Athena died, so Taylor dismantled the Nest and rebuild it, this time to accommodate a pigeon. For lack of a better alternative, she’s raided the waste baskets of Winslow for ballpoint pen and used them for tubing. It worked surprisingly well.</p><p>Granted, pigeons aren’t usually very useful in a fight, but with the beak replaced by a blade, they’re going to do a lot more damage, and at worse, they can work as a distraction.</p><p>Taylor also set things up so that she only needs to press a button of her modified watch for one to go to the Protectorate with a distress message.</p><p>She doesn’t like them, or trust them, but she doesn’t think they would ignore it. Not coming from a potentially useful cape. </p><p>Taylor is as ready as she will ever be, and so she goes to Defiant’s hideout and waits for him to come out. When he finally does, she can feel his annoyance despite his armor hiding his face and most of his body language.</p><p>“You’re a villain,” she says.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Defiant 2.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a silence.</p><p>It’s strange. Defiant is holding his poleaxe, and Taylor remembers it being pointed at her throat, but she also remembers him fighting off Basilisk, and explaining the basics of cape life to her, and she’s not sure if the silence is awkward or threatening.</p><p>“I am a villain,” Defiant says. His voice is perfectly flat.</p><p>Did she somehow get it wrong? Are there two Tinkers called Defiant running around with unpainted power armor and polearms?</p><p>“Are you… Not a villain?” Taylor asks after another silence.</p><p>“No. I am a villain. I just… Did you not know that?”</p><p>Taylor shakes her head.</p><p>“Well,” Defiant says, “it certainly explains why you came to ask <em>me</em> for advice. Although I’m not sure why you came back now that you do know.”</p><p>“You saved me,” Taylor says, “and you gave me advice. The heroes said you were bad, but I only ever saw you do good things. I guess I wanted to decide for myself.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Defiant 2.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I’m not,” Defiant says.</p><p>The answer fused, immediate, with a firmness that leaves no place to discussion.</p><p>“You <em>saved</em> me,” Taylor says, and he sighs.</p><p>“Tinker girl. Listen. It doesn’t mean anything. Just because I helped you once, or have one specific set of circumstances where I will help people doesn’t make me good. It just means I have one specific tie to morality. Someone having one specific tie to morality doesn’t make them good, or <em>safe</em>.”</p><p>Defiant sighs again.</p><p>“Stay away from villains, Tinker girl,” he says. “And I’m counting myself in the lot. Make some friends your age, someone whose morality align with yours.”</p><p>That sounds like good advice.</p><p>Except…</p><p>He’s still helping her, isn’t he?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Defiant 2.7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So what are you going to do, now ?” Defiant asks. “Personally, I suggest you leave. You <em>could</em> try to arrest me, but, frankly, you’d loose.” </p><p>Taylor has little doubt she would, preparations or not. But she wasn’t planning to. </p><p>Because, the thing is, despite his protests to the contrary, Defiant can be good, Taylor thinks.</p><p>He’s been nothing but good to her until now. He wasn’t necessarily nice about it, exasperated or condescending at time, but he was good. Even when he was warning her away, and essentially telling her he’s a bad person, he still tried to give her helpful advice.</p><p>He can be good.</p><p>Even if he’s right. Even if there’s only one specific set of circumstances in which he will show empathy and give help. Only one set of circumstances in which he will be good. That’s still goodness.</p><p>He can be good.</p><p>Taylor just needs to expand the set of circumstances in which he <em>will</em> be.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Defiant 2.8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Taylor wants to make Defiant a better person than he already is, she’s going to need to interact with him regularly, preferably somewhere other than his doorstep. </p><p>He might move otherwise, and Taylor would have to figure out where he lives again. </p><p>Pigeons are all good and well during the day, but moving pigeons at night are somewhat conspicuous, and Defiant tends to be more active at night. </p><p>She needs a night bird.</p><p>Which, unfortunately, means she needs another Nest.</p><p>Taylor doesn’t want to risk going back to the Trainyard, in case she runs into Basilisk again, so she tries going to a scrap yard further away.</p><p>Bringing the materials back home discreetly is a nightmare, but she gets it done, and soon, the new Nest contains a common nighthawk.</p><p>Two caged birds. A pigeon and a nighthawk. Aphrodite and Circe.</p><p>One whose children will spy at night, one whose children will spy at day.</p><p>Good. She can do it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Defiant 2.9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Defiant gets in a fight.</p><p>Although <em>fight</em> might be a strong word, given how fast he managed to knock Melt out. Which is a good thing because the last time she fought Thrones, she ended up melting the asphalt of an entire street. </p><p>Defiant sneaks on Melt and injects her with something that makes her falls on the ground and stop moving, and then leaves.</p><p>Taylor carefully steps toward the villainess, keeping the Birdcatcher pointed at her the whole time, until she’s close enough to croch and put two fingers on the bare part on her neck, just under her mask.</p><p>She finds a pulse.</p><p>For lack of a better option, Taylor ties Melt’s hands behind her back with zip-ties, and sends one of Circe’s children to inform the PRT.</p><p>She doesn’t like them, doesn’t trust them, but what else is she supposed to do?</p><p>She waits until the PRT agents reach the scene, and leaves before they can talk to her.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Two nights later, Taylor approaches Defiant as he comes back to his base, and is welcomed by a sigh.</p><p>“Why did you fight Melt?” she asks.</p><p>“She had something I wanted, so I neutralized her so I could take it from her base of operation,”Defiant says. </p><p>Well.</p><p>Melt robbed a hardware store last week. It was in the papers.</p><p>Taylor will write the whole thing up as morally neutral.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Defiant 2.10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Taylor wants to change Defiant’s ways, she needs to get close enough to make him want to. Close enough to influence him. She needs to build a <em>rapport</em>.</p><p>The first step to build a rapport is to find common ground. So, what do Taylor and Defiant have in common?</p><p>Not much. They’re both Tinkers, and that’s about it.</p><p>It’s still common ground. It will have to do.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Look what I made!” says Taylor with much more enthusiasm than she is feeling as she shoves her repurposed calculator under Defiant’s nose.</p><p>That thing is terrible. The screen is horribly small.</p><p>Taylor can’t do miracles. She needs something to work with.</p><p>“What does it do ?” Defiant asks. He actually sounds mildly interested.</p><p>Taylor starts a long explanation of how it uses triangulation to figure out where she is in comparison to a destination and give her directions, and Defiant starts actually asking questions.</p><p>A start. It’s a start.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Defiant 2.11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After that, Taylor’s plan to get closer to Defiant appears to make some progress.</p><p>For one, when Taylor approaches him, he sighs less often and with less annoyance, which she takes as an indication that he is warming up to her.</p><p>He’s also started to occasionally talk to her unprompted. Tinker things, mostly. Some, she can’t fit it in with the ideas that come to her. Others, mostly astuces and suggestions about tools or materials, are actually pretty helpful.</p><p>Sometimes, it makes something click in her head, and Taylor has a new, wonderful, terrible idea, and she writes it down in a notebook. Coming with the tools and materials to make them come true is still complicated, especially since still hiding from Dad.</p><p>Defiant told her she should use a cypher for her notebook, or at least make up a code to disguise what it is about, and even gave her a few tips on cryptography.</p><p>It’s working. They’re getting closer.</p><p>Taylor is moving forward.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Downward 3.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Colin’s first mistake was not to go to the Protectorate as soon as he realized he had powers.</p><p>He wanted to do something before. Something good. Something impressive. Something that would make them want him. Just in case.</p><p>Colin’s first mistake mistake was pride.</p><p> </p><p>Colin’s second mistake was to be too obvious while collecting the materials he needed.</p><p>He repeatedly went to the same scrapyard for parts. Cannibalized his appliances, and had to buy them again multiple times in a few weeks. He didn’t know it, at the time, but those where good indicators of a new Tinker. That’s how they found him.</p><p>Colin’s second mistake was carelessness.</p><p> </p><p>Colin isn’t sure what his third mistake was.</p><p>He’s not sure what he could have done better against the Pyre. Against Bone Doll’s moving corpse, and Immolatum, aflame, turning his own blows against him. Not with the gear he had with him, and his own lack of experience.</p><p>Colin’s third mistake was his downfall.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Colin woke up in a small white room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Downward 3.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The room is square and small, a few inches wider than Colin is tall, floor, walls and ceiling covered with white subway tiles.</p><p>There’s a hole a bit bigger than Colin’s fist in the middle of the room, and a sloping floor, like in a curbless shower. The only exit is a trapdoor in the ceiling, surrounded by bright fluorescent lights, too high for Colin to reach them even if he jumps.</p><p>The room is otherwise empty. Even his clothes have been stripped down to his underwear.</p><p>Colin tries not to panic.</p><p>The room is small, but too large to wedge himself between the walls and use them as leverage to climb, and the smooth tiling doesn’t offer any purchase.</p><p>The trapdoor isn’t an option, and neither is dismantling the lights to make a weapon or tool. Checking the hole doesn’t bring anything helpful.</p><p>Colin is <em>trapped</em>.</p><p>He’s almost naked in a strange room, covered in scraps and bruises after his fight against the Pyre, and he’s <em>trapped</em>.</p><p>Colin screams. He screams, and hit the wall, trying to make enough noise for someone to hear him and help.</p><p>No one comes.</p><p>Colin let himself slide down to the floor, back against the bloodied wall, and waits for someone to come to the small white room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Downward 3.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)<br/>
</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t know how long he stays in the small white room.</p><p>The trapdoor opens, sometimes, and food is thrown down to him. Things like fruits, or grapes. No plate or cutlery, nothing he could <em>use</em>. Sometimes, the room is hosed down, and him with it.</p><p>He’s cold.</p><p>He’s always cold.</p><p>The lights never go off. The room is white, and bright, too bright, and it hurts.</p><p>Everything hurts.</p><p>Maybe he hit the walls again. Made himself bleed. Wrote on the walls. Maybe it was hosed down. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he dreamed it.</p><p>Sometimes, there’s a bad smell when the trapdoor opens. Like something dead and rotting. Sometimes, there are worms eating the hand throwing down the food.</p><p>He thinks he might be going insane.</p><p>He screams, and then he begs. Please. Please. Please. Let him out.</p><p>He would do anything to get out of the small white room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Downward 3.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He wakes up, and there’s a man crouching beside him in the small white room room.</p><p>The man is short, shorter than he is, with short auburn hair and beard, and eyes an indefinable color. Blue, maybe. Or brown.</p><p>The man is smiling.</p><p>Maybe he’s hallucinating.</p><p>“Hello,” the man says. “My name is Joshua.”</p><p>The man keeps talking, and he tries to follow as much as he can, but it’s hard. He doesn’t know how long it has been since he last saw, or heard, another human being. Since he saw something other than too-bright white walls, and heard something other than himself.</p><p>“Do you understand?” asks the man. Joshua. Asks Joshua.</p><p>He swallows.</p><p>“You want me to make things for you,” he says.</p><p>“Yes,” says Joshua. “Will you ?”</p><p>He would do <em>anything</em> to get out of the small white room.</p><p>He nods.</p><p>Joshua puts a hand on his shoulder. It feels warm, almost burning. He doesn’t know how long it was since the last time someone <em>touched</em> him.</p><p>He leans into the touch, and hates himself a little for it.</p><p>“Good boy,” Joshua says.</p><p>He doesn’t remember if someone ever called him good.</p><p>He has never felt <em>less good</em> than kneeling in the small white room, Joshua’s hand burning his shoulder like a brand.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Downward 3.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)<br/>
</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Joshua takes him out of the small white room.</p><p>He introduces her to his partner Nicole. She’s Bone Doll. The rotting hand wasn’t a dream.</p><p>They sit him in a concrete room. There’s a table, and a chair. They give him tools, and materials and parts, but he has to explain what they are for and how he will use them, and Nicole’s corpse doll is always watching him.</p><p>The lights are always on.</p><p>Sometimes, Nicole and Joshua will stop by and talk to him. Sometimes, they will even let him watch TV for an hour or two after he’s done for the day.</p><p>He gets to take a warm shower, and to eat real meals. He’s even allowed clothes while he works, even if he has to take them off at the end of the day.</p><p>Right before they put him back in the small white room.</p><p>If he’s behaved right, and worked a lot, they allow him to turn off the lights.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Downward 3.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He hits the walls of the small white room again.</p><p>He wasn’t trying to escape. He wasn’t trying to hurt Nicole or Joshua, or to damage the Doll. He just…</p><p>He took a bolt. He wanted to have something in the small white room, something he could touch, and feel, something, anything, so he wouldn’t just be alone with himself.</p><p>He wasn’t trying to escape, or to hurt Nicole or Joshua, or to damage the Doll. He just hid a bolt in his mouth so he could roll it between his fingers.</p><p>He wasn’t allowed to. Joshua noticed.</p><p>He hasn’t been <em>good</em>, and it warrants punishment.</p><p>He doesn’t get to go out anymore. Doesn’t get to take warm showers, or to wear clothes. There is no TV, and no tinkering. He hits the walls because there isn’t anything else to do. </p><p>There’s only himself, his thoughts, and the walls of the small white room with too-bright lights.</p><p>Even after the punishment ends, he doesn’t get back the right to turn them off.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Downward 3.7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He curls up against a wall of the small white room and cries.</p><p>They think he’s Nicole and Joshua’s teammate. Bone Doll and Immolatum’s teammate. A part of the Pyre.</p><p>But he <em>is</em>, isn’t he? He made things for them, weapons, tools, anything they asked as well as he can. Anything not to be left in the small white room.</p><p>He made the weapon that killed that PRT agent. He might as well have done it himself.</p><p>He killed someone. They said it, on the news. The three members of the villain group known as the Pyre. Immolatum, Bone Doll, and Arsenal. </p><p>Arsenal.</p><p>They call him Arsenal.</p><p>Not Armorer. Not Weaponsmith. Not Artificier. </p><p>Arsenal. Not a name for a person, but a name for a thing to be used, again and again, a thing with giving up weapons for only purpose and worth, and the weapons have been used for killing.</p><p>He used to want to be a hero.</p><p>Stupid.</p><p>So <em>stupid</em>. </p><p>From the moment he woke up in the small white room, he could only be victim or villain.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. Downward 3.8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He needs to escape.</p><p>He’s not going to stay there. He’s not going to stay Nicole and Joshua’s little toy, their thing to be used, their <em>Arsenal</em>.</p><p>He’s not going to be their <em>victim</em>.</p><p>He used to want to be a hero. Stupid little Colin, as a child, and then later, in the two months between getting powers and being taken by Nicole and Joshua.</p><p>He used to want to be a hero.</p><p>He used to want to be great.</p><p>He wanted people to know his name. To know he existed. He wanted to be <em>acknowledged</em>.</p><p>Silly dreams for a silly boy.</p><p>None of it matters now. It’s too late for him to be a hero. It’s too late for him to be <em>good</em>. </p><p><em>Good boy</em>, said Joshua with his hand on his shoulder, and he doesn’t think anyone ever called him <em>good</em> before.</p><p>He’s only <em>good</em> as Arsenal. As a victim.</p><p>He wants to be free. </p><p>He wants to be <em>free</em>, and he <em>will be</em>.</p><p>If he has to become a villain to get out of the small white room, so be it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0032"><h2>32. Downward 3.9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1996)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He can’t make a weapon for himself. Not with the Doll always watching him, not with nowhere to hide it. Everything he makes will be taken away.</p><p>He needs to play on that.</p><p>He <em>can</em> play on that. He just has to be careful.</p><p>He’s going to trap the gear he makes. </p><p>It won’t be easy, of course. Nicole and Joshua might not be able to tell what he’s doing, exactly, or how it works, but he’s still going to need to ask them for the pieces he needs for the trap, and he can’t let on that it’s for anything other than what they requested from him. His acting will need to be perfect.</p><p>It’s slow going. The trap must be strong enough to kill the person wielding the gear immediately, and both Nicole and Joshua need to die at the same time, or the survivor will know what he did and make him pay for it.</p><p>He will only have one chance. He can’t afford to waste it.</p><p>He doesn’t think he could come back from another punishment.</p><p>He needs to be able to activate the traps himself. It won’t bring him any good if Nicole and Joshua die while he’s in the small white room. Only a slow, maddening death with no one to find his body.</p><p>It will be slow work, and he has to be careful, but the knowledge of his act of defiance keeps him going. </p><p>But he will get out of the small white room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Downward 3.10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1997)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The one thing Nicole and Joshua never asked him to make is communicators. Phones. Radios. Anything that can be used to contact another person.</p><p>It makes sense. They don’t want him to call for help.</p><p>He stays blank. Pliant. Meek. Pretends he’s not planning to murder both of them.</p><p>He doesn’t have to fake leaning into their touches, and he hates it.</p><p>He traps the taser he made for Nicole, and the lighter Joshua asked him for. He whispers the frequencies he will need to activate them until they are branded into his mind, until they come to him easier than his name did.</p><p>Nicole and Joshua never use his name. Only <em>boy</em>, or <em>Arsenal</em>.</p><p>They ask him to make a sort of flashbang, with a remote detonator, something they can use as a distraction.</p><p>He makes a flashband. He makes a detonator. He connects the detonator to the traps.</p><p>He presses a button and Joshua and Nicole die.</p><p>He won’t go back to the small white room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0034"><h2>34. Downward 3.11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The past (1997-1998)</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He’s free.</p><p>He has a backpack filled with parts, one of the weapons he made, a change of clothes, and the money he found in Joshua’s wallet.</p><p>He’s been declared missing. Presumed dead.</p><p>He could go to the police, or the PRT. Tell them he was kidnapped. Try to explain what happened. Attempt to atone. To redeem himself.</p><p>To be a hero. To be <em>good</em>.</p><p>He doesn’t want to be good. He wants to be free.</p><p>It’s far easier to leave Colin Wallis to his grave.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He’s not <em>good</em>. He’s not a hero. </p><p>He’s a villain. It’s better than being a victim or a thing to be used.</p><p>He stays away from the PRT and Protectorate, mostly. He keeps to himself, doesn’t do anything newsworthy, or makes sure he does so in a way that won’t be traced back to him.</p><p>They might have a name for him, but he doesn’t know it.</p><p>He changes town regularly. There isn’t anything holding him back.</p><p>A year after his escape, two years after he gets powers, Leviathan attacks the city he’s in.</p><p>He goes to the fight.</p><p>Things are messy, chaotic, deadly. There is no glory to it, only despair.</p><p>Someone wearing silver and gold armor asks for his name, and he thinks about Nicole and Joshua, about a taser and a lighter rigged to kill. About refusing to be good, to be a victim, to be a thing to be <em>used</em>.</p><p>“Defiant,” he says.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0035"><h2>35. Parliament 4.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor needs a cape name.</p><p>She’s thinking about naming herself after birds. It’s what makes the most sense.</p><p>Avies, maybe. Bird-related, and with a little scientific tinge that can be a callback to her being a Tinker. It even sounds nice.</p><p>It doesn’t quite <em>feels</em> right, though, and whatever name she goes with will be used a lot. She needs one she’s comfortable with.</p><p>Avies will be a back up, in case she doesn’t find anything better.</p><p>Maybe something about <em>groups</em> of birds? That’s what she <em>does</em>, after all. Catch a bird, modify it, put it in the Nest, and wait as copy of it come out.</p><p>Flight? No. It makes it sounds like she’s, well. A flyer. Which she very much isn’t.</p><p>Flock? No. Too awkward-sounding.</p><p>A group of <em>specific</em> birds? But which one? She’s already used nighthawks, pigeons, and barn owls.</p><p>Barn owls.</p><p>Little Owl.</p><p>A <em>parliament</em> of owls.</p><p>Taylor smiles. It feels right. </p><p>“Call me Parliament,” she tells Defiant.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0036"><h2>36. Parliament 4.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Did you read <em>Mending the Town</em>?” Taylor asks.</p><p>Defiant turns toward her.</p><p>“<em>Mending the Town</em>?”</p><p>“It’s a book,” Taylor says. “It was written by someone called Susan Trevino, but a lot of people think it’s probably just a pen name. It’s about a town that has been destroyed by a natural disaster, and the habitants need to rebuild afterwards. It’s not a light read, but it’s good, and there’s a lot of creative stuff when they have to improvise to replace broken stuff, so I think you could like it.”</p><p>Mom loved that book. She never read it to Taylor. She was too young, and then, Mom was dead. But Taylor missed her, and she saw the book in the library, and she read it.</p><p>It was beautiful.</p><p>Dark, in places, the characters crushed by despair and hopelessness. Hopeful, at the end, because they had made it through the dark times. People had died, and the survivors were forever changed, with sharper edges and broken things inside that may never heal, but they had made it.</p><p>Taylor thinks she might have needed to read that.</p><p>She wants Defiant to read it.</p><p>One of the main characters, McKenzie, is a much better person at the end of the book than at the beginning. It might inspire him. Influence him, even if subconsciously.</p><p>No one is immune to propaganda.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0037"><h2>37. Parliament 4.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Where do you get your supplies?” Defiant asks one night a propos of nothing.</p><p>“What?” Taylor answers, and waits for him to elaborate. Defiant isn’t very good at conversations. She thinks he doesn’t talk to a lot of people other than her.</p><p>“Your supplies,” he says. “Parts. Materials. Tools. The things you use to for tinkering. Where do you get them?”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>“I used to go to the Trainyard,” she says, “but now, I mainly go to a scrapyard, or use things from my school waste baskets.”</p><p>She’s not ashamed. <em>She’s not.</em></p><p>Defiant lets  out a pensive hum.</p><p>“Don’t keep going to the same one every time,” he says. “New Tinkers tend to do that, so people will watch them. That’s how Basilisk found you.”</p><p>It makes sense.</p><p>“What should I do, then?” she asks.</p><p>“Switch. Don’t always go to the same one. Try junkyards, abandoned buildings and demolition sites. Landfills, too, especially if they have a part for electronics. Some stores have disposal bins for batteries or used phones, you can use that if you’re discreet or have a distraction. Switch between all of them, but don’t have a regular schedule. Be unpredictable.”</p><p>He pauses to let her digest the information.</p><p>“I advise against robbing a hardware or electronic store,” he adds. “You might as well wave an invitation at everyone, including the Protectorate.”</p><p>Taylor doesn’t point out it would be wrong. She doesn’t think he would care.</p><p>He still has a long way to go.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0038"><h2>38. Parliament 4.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I wish I had a better costume,” Taylor says. “The pockets are nice, but it’s not very protective.”</p><p>“Most Tinkers can make some kind of armor,” Defiant says.</p><p>She <em>could</em>, but it would involve sewing living birds together by the wings, and that’s a bit more nightmarish than what she’s going for.</p><p>“Not an option,” she says.</p><p>Defiant goes back inside, and leaves her on the sidewalk.</p><p>Nice.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The next time Taylor sees Defiant, he drops a PRT field uniform in front of her.</p><p>“It’s armored,” he says. He doesn’t say how he got it. </p><p>It’s somewhat worrying.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0039"><h2>39. Parliament 4.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor strips the PRT uniform of all identifying markers, and dyes it a tan color, before painting the distinctive face of an owl on the visor of the helmet.</p><p>It’s still pretty obvious it’s a PRT uniform, though, so she resolves to make a coat with some fabric she found.</p><p>She’s pretty happy with how the coat comes out. She didn’t expect her sewing skills to be so good. It’s oversized, so it can fit over the burly PRT uniform, and she lined the inside with pockets.</p><p>She thinks she’s going to cover the coat with feathers. It might take a while, but it will make it look more… Bird-like.</p><p>And, hopefully, bring attention away from the <em>obviously stolen PRT property</em>.</p><p>“What do you think?” she asks Defiant.</p><p>“I tried <em>Mending the Town</em>,” he answers, which is entirely unrelated but still good to know.</p><p>“Did you like it?”</p><p>Defiant takes the time to think. </p><p>“The cat was very relatable,” he decides.</p><p>The cat. The cat that got trapped in a pet carrier until McKenzie found it and scratched everyone and ran off as soon as it was freed. </p><p>That isn’t the take Taylor was expecting.</p><p>“I have a list of books for you,” she says.</p><p>They all have great redemption arcs.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0040"><h2>40. Parliament 4.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Why didn’t you go to the Wards?” Defiant asks.</p><p>Taylor freezes.</p><p>“I don’t understand,” she lies. </p><p>“You do,” Defiant says. “You didn’t know I was a villain when you asked me for advice the first time, so I don’t think you were planning on being one. You could have gotten to the Protectorate, or the PRT, but you didn’t. Why? It would have been a lot safer.”</p><p>He’s not wrong. She <em>could</em> have joined the Wards. She would have had support, advice from someone who isn’t a villain, a budget, better access to better materials, tools and parts, and she doesn’t think they would have turned her down.</p><p>Sophia is a Ward. Taylor got sacrificed for her.</p><p>She’s not sure what would have been worse: if she had joined the Wards and things hadn’t changed, or if she had joined them and things <em>had</em> changed.</p><p>“I didn’t want to be in a group where I would only be wanted because I’m <em>useful</em>,” she tells Defiant.</p><p>He makes a small, aborted movement, and for a split second, Taylor thinks he’s going to put his hand on her shoulder in comfort.</p><p>He doesn’t.</p>
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<a name="section0041"><h2>41. Parliament 4.7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor is making progress with Defiant, she thinks. They're growing closer. He’s definitely warming up to her.</p><p>It doesn’t mean there isn’t a <em>distance</em> between them. He’s not a very open person.</p><p>He’s hard to read, a lot of the time. His face is completely hidden by his visor, so she can’t rely on his expression, and his body language is buried in the bulk of his power armor. She has to go by his voice, and he doesn’t talk that much, unless she’s the one starting the conversation, or he wants to make sure she’s not doing anything stupid.</p><p>Small talk is like pulling teeth, and Taylor has mostly given up on it. It’s much easier to talk to him if she has a specific subject in mind, and even then, it can be complicated.</p><p>That’s a problem.</p><p>She can’t influence him into heroism if she’s not close enough to influence him <em>period</em>.</p><p>She needs to get him to open up.</p>
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<a name="section0042"><h2>42. Parliament 4.8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Given the way Defiant had become more welcoming after being shown one of her creations, Taylor expected tinkering to become an easy method of bonding.</p><p>She was wrong.</p><p>It very much isn’t.</p><p>The first problem is that tinkering isn’t a universal thing, even between Tinkers. What is evident to Taylor can be incomprehensible to Defiant, and vice-versa. That’s why Dragon is so powerful. It makes communicating on the subject more complicated than she thought it would be. </p><p>The second and most important problem is that Defiant doesn’t want to talk about <em>his</em> tinkering.</p><p>He will listen to Taylor talking about what she did, or is doing. He will give advice on tools or materials. Occasionally, he will give her a spare part of unknown provenance. But he won’t talk about his projects, about what he did or is doing.</p><p>Even there, there’s a distance.</p>
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<a name="section0043"><h2>43. Parliament 4.9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor doesn’t remember how they started talking about Dragon, but Defiant appears to have a grudge against her.</p><p>Or, at the very least, against her creation and distribution of containment foam.</p><p>“What do you <em>have</em> against containment foam?” she asks.</p><p>There is loathing in Defiant’s voice as he answers.</p><p>“It works,” he says. “It works <em>very well</em>. If they cover enough of me with it, I won’t be able to do much of anything.”</p><p>Taylor takes the time to consider the explanation.</p><p>“On the other hand,” she points out, “they would probably still find a way to neutralize you otherwise. The containment foam makes it possible to do so without hurting you.”</p><p>“I’d rather die than be captured,” Defiant says.</p><p>There is a heavy, definitive note in his voice, and Taylor thinks it might be true.</p>
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<a name="section0044"><h2>44. Parliament 4.10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And then Taylor fucked up.</p><p>To be entirely honest, she’s not sure <em>how</em>, exactly, she fucked up. Only that she did.</p><p>It was yet another attempt at establishing a rapport, and get him to open up, and talk about himself. Understand what makes him tick so she has a better idea of how to make him good.</p><p>She asked about his name.</p><p>“It’s not an obvious choice,” she said. “I would have thought of something like Artificier, or knight-related. I’m just curious about why you went with Defiant.”</p><p>He didn’t answer.</p><p>Instead, he left her on the sidewalk again and went straight back to his lair.</p><p>Taylor hasn’t seen him in several days. She thinks he’s avoiding her.</p><p>She fucked up.</p><p>She’s not sure how, but she fucked up.</p>
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<a name="section0045"><h2>45. Parliament 4.11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next time Taylor sees Defiant, it’s on the news. </p><p>She’s in the living room with Dad, watching TV, and all at once, the anchor is talking about a skirmish between Protectorate heroes Miss Militia and Arctic, and an “out-of-town villain”.</p><p>Miss Militia got out unharmed. Arctic was hurt, and will need to be hospitalized for an undetermined length of time, but is expected to make a full recovery.</p><p>The villain isn’t named, but a bit of blurry footage from the fight is shown, and Taylor recognizes the villain’s armor.</p><p>It’s Defiant.</p><p>Taylor isn’t sure how she ever thought he was a hero.</p><p>The unpainted metal of his armor is dark under the streetlights, and the low quality of the footage makes it hard to see, but she thinks there might be blood on it.</p><p>Some of it might be Arctic’s.</p><p>Taylor is fairly sure most of it is Defiant’s.</p>
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<a name="section0046"><h2>46. Interlude 2.x</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She helped him.</p><p>Parliament. The Tinker girl. She helped him.</p><p>The wound inflicted by Miss Militia after Arctic damaged his armor was deep, and medical equipment isn’t his specialty. Left alone, he might have bled out. He might not have. Impossible to say now.</p><p>He might have been caught. Kept in a small white room until they decided his fate. </p><p>Or worse. Defiant heard that sometimes, the Protectorate absorbs captured villain into their ranks. They might have tried that.</p><p>Tried giving him a new name, and call him <em>good</em> so they could <em>use him</em>.</p><p>He’d rather <em>die</em>.</p><p>Parliament wants him to be good. Defiant isn’t stupid. He noticed the pattern in her book recommendations. </p><p>Parliament helped him. Without her, he might have died, or <em>worse</em>.</p><p>Defiant thinks he might be starting to care about her. Not just projecting, but actually caring about her, and he’s not entirely sure what to make of it.</p><p>She <em>helped</em> him. He’s not sure what to make of that either.</p><p>She wants him to be good, and he <em>can’t</em>, he <em>won’t</em>, he doesn’t <em>want to</em>.</p><p>Defiant doesn’t want to have any kind of confrontation here. Not in this hospital room, with its white tiles and walls and its too-bright fluorescent lights. He doesn’t trust himself to keep himself in check. But when he’s out…</p><p>He’s a villain. He doesn’t want to be anything else. </p><p>He’s going to need to talk to Parliament.</p>
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<a name="section0047"><h2>47. Upward 5.1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>I’d rather die</em> Defiant had said of the prospect of capture, and Taylor had believed him.</p><p>He’d hurt Arctic. Badly. He could have killed her, with that attack. He didn’t, but he could have.</p><p>He didn’t. It has to matter.</p><p>It has to matter because Taylor helped him.</p><p>She went to her room, and sneaked out as soon as Dad fell asleep to go to Defiant’s lair.</p><p>There was blood on the sidewalk.</p><p>His blood. She’d been right. He was hurt.</p><p>He was hurt <em>badly</em>.</p><p>The official hospitals weren’t an option. Too suspicious.</p><p>The <em>Rogue</em> hospital, however, was a possibility. Kate Ether and Ann T. Body are known for healing anyone who agrees to pay, villain included, as long as they aren’t affiliated with Empire.</p><p>They asked for blood. Taylor agreed.</p><p>It’s fine. People give their blood all the time.</p><p>It has to be fine. It has to be fine, because Taylor didn’t do it for the plan. She didn’t do it to make him good, or a hero.</p><p>She did it because he would rather die than be captured, and she doesn’t want him to.</p>
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<a name="section0048"><h2>48. Upward 5.2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After Defiant gets out of the Rogue Hospital, Taylor goes back to his lair.</p><p>For the first time, he invites her to come inside.</p><p>The building has been abandoned for years before Defiant set camp inside, and it shows. There are basically no furnitures, the lightbulbs are missing where he didn’t bother to replace them, and water damages are visible in places.</p><p>None of this matter, though, because there are scrap metals and spare parts lined against the walls and Taylor is incredibly jealous.</p><p>Defiant guides Taylor to what must have been a living room, once. Now, the only furnitures are two camping chairs, a table and a radio. The walls are covered in complex schematics she can’t make any sense of.</p><p>Defiant gestures for her to sit down, then takes the other seat.</p><p>“We need to talk,” he says.</p><p>That doesn’t sound like an auspicious start.</p><p>“I know what you’ve been trying to do,” continues Defiant “with the books. And other things, probably. You want me to be good.”</p><p>He pauses for a second, as if gathering his thoughts.</p><p>“I’m not good,” he says. “Parliament. I don’t <em>want</em> to be <em>good</em>, and all you will get by trying to change that is me going away.”</p><p>Defiant sights. There’s a hard, heavy knot deep into Taylor’s guts.</p><p>“I don’t mind you coming by,” he say. “You helped me, and I’m starting to like you. But if you want a hero, Parliament, you will need to be one yourself.”</p>
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<a name="section0049"><h2>49. Upward 5.3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Had things been different, Taylor thinks she would have wanted to be a hero from the very beginning. Would have strived for it, as soon as she realized she had powers. Would have gone out looking for crime, and tried to stop it. She might even have joined the Wards, or the Protectorate, later. </p><p>But.</p><p>Shadow Stalker.</p><p>Sophia.</p><p>They sacrificed her. The PRT, the Wards, the heroes. They looked at Sophia, and then they looked at her, and they thought one was useful and the other wasn’t. And then, it was only a matter of greater good.</p><p>Defiant is half-right, but he’s half-wrong, too. She wanted him to be good.</p><p>She didn’t want to make him a hero. The word is…</p><p>Tainted.</p><p>It’s not fair. It’s not fair that, after everything, Sophia took that from her, too. Strong, beautiful Sophia. Sophia the Ward. Sophia the hero.</p><p><em>If you want a hero, Parliament, you will need to be one yourself</em>, said Defiant.</p><p>Maybe he’s right. Maybe she could be a hero, still. Maybe she should.</p><p>She’s better than them or, at least, she wants to be. </p><p>Parliament will not be their victim.</p>
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<a name="section0050"><h2>50. Upward 5.4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ironically enough, now that Taylor isn’t looking for any means to get Defiant to open up, he actually does.</p><p>He lets her come inside his lair, now. There are still a few rooms she’s not allowed to go in, and which she was informed were trapped, but she gets access to his kitchen and living room, and to some of his workshops. He has several of them, for different projects.</p><p>He tells her she can use some of his supplies, as long as she checks with him beforehand.</p><p>A few weeks later, he frees a workshop for her.</p><p>It’s a bit weird, making preparatives to be a hero in a villain’s lair, working with villain-supplied materials, but well. She sorely needs upgrades if she wants to be a hero, and he’s fine with it as long as she doesn’t use it against him, and she doesn’t plan to.</p><p>Let it be her one hypocrisy.</p><p>A few weeks more, and as Taylor puts the finishing touch to Athena’s replacement Minerva, Defiant starts tinkering in other workshops while she’s there.</p><p>He always listens to something while he works, music, news on the radio, an audiobook from the list she recommended to him, and he doesn’t object to her briefly stopping by.</p><p>It feels like trust.</p><p>It feels nice.</p>
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<a name="section0051"><h2>51. Upward 5.5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Minerva’s children are ready.</p><p>Taylor <em>could</em> have tried patrolling, could have donned her modified PRT uniform and her feathery coat and walked through the streets hoping to somehow run into a crime she can stop, but it sounds very inefficient.</p><p>Using Minerva’s children eyes to look is a far better idea.</p><p>The materials supplied by Defiant allowed her to make far better cameras for Minerva, and to build a set up allowing the footage recorded by her children to be projected on screens. It can be a bit confusing to watch several screens at once, but it’s still a more practical option than foot patrol, allowing her to cover more ground.</p><p>Taylor doesn’t need to physically be present. She replaced Minerva’s talons with blades, and her children’s are just as sharp.</p><p>She’s ready to be a hero.</p>
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<a name="section0052"><h2>52. Upward 5.6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For some reason, Taylor expected her first act as a hero would be interrupting a mugging.</p><p>It… Wasn’t. It was scaring a creep away from a woman leaving a bar, and then having one of Minerva’s children fly beside her as she went home.</p><p>Before going inside her building, the woman turned toward the child of Minerva.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said.</p><p>Taylor didn’t answer. She was too far away to, and didn’t think to give Minerva the ability to speak.</p><p>That was… An oversight. One she needs to fix.</p><p>There are, in hindsight, a few things she overlooked, and her inability to talk to the people her birds interact with is only one of them. Communication with the authorities is another. She needs a way to contact the PRT or Protectorate, maybe even the BBPD, and a pigeon with a pre-written note won’t be enough.</p><p>Taylor has a lot more to work on.</p><p>Still.</p><p>She helped someone.</p><p>It might not have been a great fight against a dangerous villain, or the slaying of a dragon, not even the kind of thing that make the news, but she helped someone.</p><p>She did it.</p><p>She’s a hero.</p>
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<a name="section0053"><h2>53. Upward 5.7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Although Defiant remains steadfast in his decision not to get involved in Taylor’s heroing, he’s also kind of supportive about it.</p><p>He’s not doing big, obvious things like keeping a tally of people she’s saving, or bringing her tea while she watches her screens, but…</p><p>He’s <em>there</em>. Not in the room, but in his workshop, and there’s light, and the whisper of whatever he’s listening at the moment, and she’s not alone.</p><p>He’s there.</p><p>That’s weird. All this time wanting to change him, to make him a better person, to make him <em>good</em>, and Taylor thinks she likes him better now that she’s stopped trying.</p><p>He’s there.</p><p>For now, at least, it’s enough.</p>
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<a name="section0054"><h2>54. Upward 5.8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What are you doing?” Defiant asks.</p><p>Taylor raises her head from the speaker she’s working on.</p><p>“I'm giving Minerva a voice so I can speak through her children,” she says. “In case I need to communicate with the people I help, or the authorities.” </p><p>He hums in understanding.</p><p>“How will it work?”</p><p>“Minerva and her children will have speakers,” Taylor explains, “and I will have a transmitter with a micro, and what I say in the micro will come out of the speaker I choose. The speakers will be in the children’s throats, so it should sound like they’re the ones speaking, and I think I should be able to tweak the transmitter so I can use it to make phone calls. I’m thinking about calling it the Chatterbox.”</p><p>Defiant thinks for a few seconds.</p><p>“A bit of advice,” he says. “First, add a voice changer to it. Second, make sure the signal of the Chatterbox can’t be tracked back to it, especially if you’re going to use it <em>here</em>.”</p><p>Well.</p><p>That’s good advice, but it means she has to do it again almost from scratch.</p><p>“Thanks,” she says.</p>
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<a name="section0055"><h2>55. Upward 5.9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Do you know know how I can get Monarch butterflies? Like, in bulk?” Taylor asks Defiant.</p><p>If he thinks her question is weird, he doesn’t show it.</p><p>“I might,” he says, “but I have two conditions.”</p><p>Conditions?</p><p>“What are the conditions?” Taylor asks.</p><p>Defiant doesn’t hesitate for a second. He must have been sitting on it for a while.</p><p>“The first condition is you tell me what they’re for,” he says.</p><p>Easy enough, and it makes sense. </p><p>“I want to make a kind of tranquilizer so Minerva’s children can make takedowns more easily without excessive harm to the target, and Monarch butterflies were the only poisonous bugs I could think of,” she explains. “What’s the second condition?”</p><p>“Once a week,” he says, “I will give you some money so you can get me groceries.”</p><p>… That’s not what Taylor was expecting. </p><p>“We have a deal,” she says.</p>
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<a name="section0056"><h2>56. Upward 5.10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Taylor has been thinking a lot about the meaning of the word <em>hero</em> a lot since she decided to become one.</p><p>It’s a complex word. Everyone has their own definition. </p><p>What is a hero? A parangon of virtue, always ever doing what is right? Someone with bright, shiny powers, fighting monsters and villains in grand battles? Someone who fights to uphold justice and the law? Someone who tries to save lives no matter the risks for themselves? Someone who helps people?</p><p>Someone who is kind?</p><p>What is a hero?</p><p>What is a villain?</p><p>Can’t someone be both?</p><p>Taylor has been thinking about Sophia a lot. Sophia who is Shadow Stalker, who is a Ward, who is a hero. Sophia who saved lives and destroyed Taylor’s.</p><p>Sophia is a hero to the people she saved.</p><p>Sophia is a villain to Taylor.</p><p>Both those things are equally true, and one does not change the other.</p><p>Defiant isn’t a good person. Defiant is selfish, a criminal, a villain to the world.</p><p>Defiant is Taylor’s hero.</p><p>All she can do is try her best.</p>
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<a name="section0057"><h2>57. Upward 5.11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time passes.</p><p>Taylor finishes the Chatterbox and the tranquilizer, and convinces Dad to let her go on runs in the morning. Defiant improves a gun range in one of his hallways and makes her practice with the Birdcatcher. She does his groceries and, through trials and errors, learns what he likes and doesn’t like, although she still makes sure to vary what she buys him. She figures out that if she buys things <em>she</em> likes, he won’t protest if she makes herself a snack in his kitchen, to eat while she watches Brockton Bay through the eyes of Minerva’s children.</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>Parliament grows. She’s not sure how to attack the bigger problem, isn’t even sure she <em>can</em>, so she focuses on smaller ones instead. Walking people home safely, breaking up minor fights or assaults, guiding a runaway child to a shelter, once. Not big things, but still important ones. People are starting to know her name.</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>Taylor turns fifteen, and longs for the summer. School drags on, excruciating. Days after days after days of paper cuts, stacking upon each others to form an ever-opened wound. At least, she knows she’s a hero. She’s more than their victim. She can make it. She’s <em>better</em> than them.</p><p>Time passes.</p><p>One night, when Taylor walks inside Defiant’s workshop, he’s not wearing his helmet, and his face is bare.</p><p>He tells her she can call him Colin.</p>
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